Chapter 3: The Journey Begins
1995 would be the year that would prove that the past five years of development were either a waste of time and money or a successful venture for the US Space Program and the Selene Program. The first flight would be the 70th mission of the Space Shuttle Program: STS-70-T. The naming system was chosen to try and be as simple as possible with the letter T standing for Testing, the letter C standing for Crew, and the letter U standing for unmanned cargo/experiments. STS-70-T will carry two boilerplates: a boilerplate LEV and CM which will be part of the test mission SLP-001-T. The mission would exclude the Titan IV and Centaur-T and mainly focuses on training the crew for their responsibilities after reaching orbit. Starting on Day 1, the crew will focus on constructing the boilerplates into the launch configuration, three hours after doing so, two payload specialists would conduct an EVA to inspect the capsule and LEV to make sure it is able to complete flight, the crew would enter the shuttle again after this step and in the case of needing to abort the mission, the crew would simply deconstruct and head home, anyways the crew after heading inside will keep the boilerplate in launch configuration and will sit in orbit until Day 2. On day 2, the mission specialist will use the Canadarm to pick up the ELA stack and let it sit in free float for about an hour or two under close monitoring by the rest of the crew in case it floats off too far, then it will be retrieved, deconstructed, and the crew will conduct a final EVA before sitting in orbit for the next two days with a return set for the 4th day. It will be a short mission but sometimes short and sweet is just enough for a first step. Columbia was chosen to be the lucky orbiter to lift SLP-001-T to orbit.
On the afternoon of July 14th, 1995, Space Shuttle Columbia, fresh out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, sat on LC-39A awaiting the beginning of a new era of exploration. It was a perfect day for a launch with it being windy but not enough to cancel the launch all together, the sun was out, and the moon was hiding in the horizon; a foreshadowing of the destination to come someday. The countdown arrived at T-1 minute, all systems were nominal, and the countdown continued. The Command Module was cradled just behind the Shuttle Airlock with a truss separating it from the lander section. The countdown reached T-6 seconds and the three RS-25 engines roared to life and soon after, the new ASRMs lifted the stack off of the pad in the matter of microseconds and the mission was on! The launch commentator is quoted saying “Columbia launches once more, carrying us forward towards the moon with the rise of Selene!”. Just as expected, the lightweight ET design and the new SRB design made reaching the parking orbit a smooth ride. Eight and a half minutes later, Columbia reaches orbit and the crew prepare for the work that will come the next day. From the rear windows in the cockpit, the boilerplates could be seen, and they were quite the sight to see inside the payload bay.
Day 1 arrives, and the crew are quick to get to work following the newly made Selene Program Shuttle Operations Manual (SPSOM). The first step was extraction of the LEV and CM by the Mission Specialist using the Canadarm. This is the most precarious part of the shuttle side of the mission due to the LEV being the largest component of the mission but there were no worries as the crew have been training for this moment for years by now. Only a few hours later, and the crew had the LEV in the detachment configuration! The next step was to get the Command Module onto the LEV. Mission Specialists got to their places and maneuvered the Canadarm over to the CM located behind the Airlock. Just after the Canadarm connected to the CM, the CM would not budge almost as if the docking piece holding it to the shuttle jammed. Following contingency instructions found in SPSOM, the crew would need to manually unlatch the CM from the shuttle either through an EVA or through the shuttle controls. It was decided with ground control to first attempt to use the unlatching switches found in the shuttle to remove the CM and if that were to fail then an EVA would be conducted. The crew attempted to use the release switch shortly after the original separation failure and after a moment of silence, the Command Module did not separate. The crew went back to mission control reporting the negative report and the crew went to contingency option #2: an EVA. Since an EVA was already planned, the crew had the right gear needed and could get straight to work on separating the capsule though after this EVA, the second EVA would need to be delayed to later in the mission duration.
By the time ELA should’ve been in separation configuration, the mission and payload specialists were suiting up for an EVA to get the thing separated. On the Evening of July 15th, the EVA to separate the capsule began. The first inspection took place at the docking port since there must’ve been a blockage that prevented the docking ring from separating from the shuttle. Flashlights were used due to the coming sunset which made the situation somewhat more precarious. The issue was found at the bottom of the docking ring where one of the Docking Petals that would connect to the shuttle were jammed in place. Tools that were issued for the original EVA could make easy work of the situation but it was decided that since the night was coming the repair would need to happen the next day and so they returned into the airlock.
Day 2 begins, and the crew wakes up with one mission in mind: undock the Command Module. Two astronauts suited up again for another EVA which would be the last chance for a repair and if a repair couldn’t be completed then the LEV would need to be stowed again and returned home with the crew. Backdropped by the ocean, the EVA members used small pickaxe-like tools to dislodge the blockage at the petal. The next 2 or so hours of extra-vehicular activity were slow, but the blockage was successfully removed from the docking port. The crew returned back inside to hopefully have a shot at attempting the second and last maneuver in the first ELA mission. Inside the shuttle, the release switch was triggered again, and a muffled clunk was heard. It was all part of the mission, but it shook up the crew a little after the troubles that were just triumphed over. The canadarm was moved over to the CM and it was planted into the LEV docking port with a docking confirmed down at Houston that the docking was secure nearly a day after the first attempt. No EVA could be done now to do an inspection of the full stack so it was decided to not have it free float in the case that the docking port comes loose in some worst-case scenario which wasn’t much off the scope of what could happen after the docking port incident earlier in the mission. After getting some good photos for the people on the ground, the CM was removed from the LEV and berthed with the shuttle again while the LEV was lowered into the launch configuration once again. The crew could now do other small-scale experiments inside for the rest of the mission duration.
Day 3 passes and Day 4 arrives, and the crew prepare to bring Columbia back home. The crew were to land at Kennedy Space Center once it was confirmed that landing conditions were green. A few OMS burns and drifting in space later, and the shuttle was gliding through the atmosphere and soon enough, touched down at KSC that afternoon on July 17th, 1995. The shuttle was brought with the boilerplates to the Orbiter Processing Facility where the ELA was removed completely and brought to a separate building for examination of the docking port.
The mission was a risky success but like all first missions there is always at least one thing that fails but that’s part of trial and error. The next mission was scheduled to use the first full ELA capsule which if it was given life support and actual seats, could house two astronauts but the next mission would be somewhat the same as STS-70-T but all of the original mission objectives would be completed. Meanwhile as the shuttle makes advancements, the Titan IV continues to prepare for its first Selene Program mission sometime in 1997.
Either way, the future of the Selene Program is bright and closer than many may expect with the first test mission with mission worthy hardware coming by quickly but like all things, we are ready.
